A man wearing one red sneaker and one green sneaker moves back and forth on his unicycle in the Armory Monday evening. He is surrounded by students and adults either juggling or riding unicycles, while members of ROTC practice and students race around them on the Armory track.

They aren’t a badly publicized circus act – they’re members of the Illini Juggling and Unicycle Club.

Club president Allen Witman said that a unicycle club began at the University in 1983. It then became a joint unicycle and juggling club in 1984. There are an average of 15 to 20 members at every practice.

The members meet every Monday from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. in the Armory track to practice various unicycle and juggling tricks and to help each other learn more.

“Juggling is a lot of fun, I like it because it doesn’t require a lot of thinking – it’s a lot different from what I do for a living,” said Chris LaReau, a 38-year-old software writer and avid juggler.

LaReau is proof that graduation does not signify the end of membership in this particular club, unlike many other registered student organizations. He began juggling in the University club and has continued for 20 years.

LaReau said it would take him four to five hours to run through all the juggling tricks he knows.

“I’m orders of magnitude below really good jugglers,” he added.

He said that the juggling community is interesting because everyone is a little “offbeat,” but in a really good way.

Henry Radcliffe, a television director at WILL wearing the mismatched sneakers, said he has been riding unicycles and juggling for over 20 years and that he enjoys it because it’s fun and keeps him in shape.

“I like helping anybody who wants to learn but may not have some of the things they need,” Radcliffe said.

One of the students at the practice who has benefited from Radcliffe’s generosity is 16-year-old Kyle Tobias, a junior at Champaign Central High School. Tobias taught himself to juggle years ago but said he learned to unicycle on a bike he borrowed from Radcliffe.

“I’m the only one I know of at my school who juggles and unicycles,” Tobias said.

LaReau, Radcliffe and Tobias are a few of the non-collegiate members of the Illini Juggling and Unicycling club. Approximately two-thirds of the members are University students. Many of them entered the world of unicycles and juggling through the club.

The main difference between riding a unicycle and riding a regular bicycle is that you can fall in any direction and it’s much harder to get up, said Phil Roper, freshman in LAS. He joined the club after seeing it at quad day and has been riding a unicycle for four weeks.

Roper doesn’t own a unicycle; he learned on one of Radcliffe’s. He said the unicycle on which he practices would cost approximately $425.

Roper said he has also learned to do tricks with a diablo. It is an hourglass-shaped blue object balanced on a string between two attached sticks. The sticks allow the juggler to toss the diablo into the air.

Roper said his favorite part of the University club is riding a unicycle; he aspires to buy his own one day.

Witman, a junior in engineering, said he bought a unicycle in January 2004 and then looked online to find a University club that he could join. One of his relatives had a unicycle, but he didn’t know how to juggle or unicycle until he joined the club.

Witman explained that learning to ride a unicycle can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a month, but he added that it comes quicker to those who already know how to do bike tricks. He said riding a unicycle is a little ridiculous, but he really enjoys it. The weirdest thing that’s happened to him so far was having someone throw something at him from Joe’s Brewery as he was riding his unicycle past it.

“I thought this would be great, I could learn to do another stupid thing and embarrass my friends,” Witman said.